Past Cure I Am, Now Reason Is Past Care, And Frantic-Mad With Evermore Unrest.

That intense, ravenous longing, that urgent need to see reality somehow differently than what it is, is the seeker's drive. We are all seekers, in one way or another; all activity is a seeking for consciousness - this life, just as it is - or a desire to come home to pure awareness (which can be called unadorned living) without importance placed on the content of life's story. How we want this! It is desired so strongly. And, frustratingly, we are told there is nothing we can do to make it happen. It's God's will, says Ramesh Balsekar; if its meant to happen, it will, and if it's not, it won't, says Stanley Sobottka.

Yet most of the bloggers and writers and teachers that seekers ferret out seem to have the (often only implied) goal of facilitating an awakening, even if it's merely to encourage the seeker to stop seeking, or to see that the personality is not what makes the man. Traditional teachers have many methods of stripping away all Earthly desires; more modern teachers encourage seekers to simply see things as they are, thus letting awareness shine through naturally. Sometimes the only action advocated is to "drop" the personal identity.

Well, how on Earth, or very pointedly how not on Earth, does one "drop" the very thing that does the dropping?

Therein lies the frustration. There is nothing the identity can do to drop itself; anything the persona does reinforces its own existence (and misunderstanding) as the seat of being, rather than being an adjunct, or a convenience. If it's any consolation - and consolation is not necessarily the goal either - "after" this seems to happen, the personal identity just ceases to be so important, and the task at hand is tended to very directly. That inchoate, wistful, painful, often all-consuming longing for things to be somehow different - somehow better - than they are just disappears. There can still be longing, but it is more like longing for the sake of longing; all states, all actions, all feelings, thoughts, plans and goals, exist only for their own sake. But there is no apt description of unfiltered life. It is what we've always done, but have never realised it was so.